Articles > Jousting With Giants

As we saddled up for our four-day ‘patrol,’ I felt like a raw recruit preparing for a Boer war skirmish. Trailmaster Steve Rufus’s pre-ride briefing enhanced the feeling that we were about to enter hostile terrain: “I’m in touch with the game vehicles by radio and I’ll try to avoid any known predator territory. But if we run into lion, we bring the horses together to present a united front.” (I thought how rangers are very much like kindly doctors in the sensitive way they have of referring to predators always in the singular.)

“We stand our ground, with the horse’s heads towards the lion, until somebody backs down…and it won’t be us.” There seemed to be a general air of confidence among my more experienced fellow-riders that I had difficulty reflecting.

This eastern corner of Botswana, known as Tuli Block, has remained almost unchanged since the pioneer columns blazed these trails in the 1800s and the predators here have historically had little reason to fear man. Nor do they recognise the difference between a horse and a zebra - it’s well known that the stripes are tasteless. It was a sobering thought as we rode out of the Fort Jameson stables (characteristically named after the whisky) that for the next few days I would probably be the easiest meal ticket in the entire Tuli Block.

In addition to a large cat population, the 75,000 acres of pristine African wilderness through which we were riding provides one of the last refuges for the great elephant herds that once roamed freely along the Limpopo Valley. It is not uncommon to come across herds of several hundred here and it is with good reason that Mashatu Game Reserve is known as ‘Land of the Giants.’

Our trail led us first along the Zimbabwe border through an area of mopane bush where we startled kudu, impala, steenbok, ostrich, bushpig and the reserve’s famous hunting jackals. On the opposite bank of the Pitsani (Little Zebra) River we saw a large hyena loping home after a long night of mischief. She stopped calmly to watch us and wonder what we were…or if we were good to eat.

On an area of open savanna we were able to fan out for a canter – as Steve said, “to find the gears” – and I was amazed to see a group of wildebeest and zebra come shooting out of the bush to join us. Unused to riders, they thought we were just another part of plains herds and the thud of our hooves was enough to trigger their instinct for safety-in-numbers. For an unforgettable few minutes we galloped with a herd of eland bulls (the largest of the antelopes) and when we had to return for one of our fallen comrades - whose horse had posted him through an unfeasibly small gap in a now shattered acacia tree - they halted and looked back as if to say, “Why have we stopped?”

There were numerous dry-river beds to cross and this was where our lusty steeds really seemed to enjoy themselves. It took all my strength to hold Strider back so that he didn’t try to launch himself at the gully in one crazy flying leap. Even so, by the time we hit the opposite bank he would be in full sprint and I could only hope to aim him at a section where the acacia trees were high enough to let me slide under, lying flat on his neck, with my fingers wrapped in his mane…and an involuntary howl bursting from my lips.

In the early afternoon, just as the heat – and the saddles – were becoming uncomfortable we rode into camp on the northern bank of Kipling’s ‘great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo.’ Steve’s assistants Joyce and Sam had already unloaded the back-up vehicle of fresh local produce and the ice-boxes of G&T, without which no safari would be worthy of the name.

Joyce is a Motswana lady who trained as a cordon bleu chef at one of the elite lodges in the Okavango Delta. She has transferred her already impressive talents to a traditional campfire potjie with such dedication that she selects her firewood – now a few sprigs of scrub-apple, now a mopane branch - to add the last touch of subtle seasoning for the absolute perfection of her meals.

We rose at dawn and, as we breakfasted on tropical fruit-salad and fresh-baked blueberry muffins, a lion’s cough echoed chillingly from the thick riverside bush. The horses began to pull at the pony line and we wasted no time in saddling up.

In the course of a week at Mashatu I’d seen several prides of lions, five cheetah and no less than four leopards. It was a measure of Steve’s evasive skills that we were able to avoid an unwanted close-up of that hunting male.

Our detour took us through a vast expanse of mopane scrub, a favourite diet of elephants and certain voracious caterpillars. It has been shown that these ‘mopane grubs’ are capable of more destruction across an area of mopane-veld during a single six-week feeding frenzy than elephants could do in a decade. And across the same area the grubs can produce 3.8 times more faecal matter!

It’s quite possible that Tessa Bott, one of our ‘out-riders’ from Botswana’s department of tourism, was in possession of these figures because she had a distinct aversion to mopane grubs: “I’m quite happy with elephant, and I don’t even mind lion,” her voice rose into hysteria as she swiped the two-inch blue-and-gold grubs off her shirt, “but I just don’t do worms!”

Having ‘done’ mopane worms myself – in their traditional guise as a gritty shallow-fried ‘delicacy’ – I could sympathise. It was inevitable in a reserve that boasts over 1,200 nomadic elephants that we were likely to run into at least a few here, in one of their favourite riverside dining areas. While they are not habitually aggressive, the elephants of Mashatu have enjoyed an isolation that has kept them un-habituated to horsemen, and a breeding herd is at its most unpredictable…especially when its breakfast has been interrupted.

We backed quietly away from the first feeding group that barricaded our path but soon it began to look like we had ridden into the middle of a veritable pachyderm minefield. Steve estimated the herd to be over a hundred-strong and for over two hours our route was blocked at every turn by hyper-protective parents and boisterous older siblings…each weighing up to four tonnes!

The herds are known to Mashatu’s rangers by the name of their matriarchal leader (Scarflank, Charge, Right Hook) and, as we found ourselves ever-deeper in this maze of grey flesh and ivory, I began to hope that we had run into Floppy Ears’s mob or, at worst, Stompette’s.

Eventually Steve led us into a dried riverbed that would provide a thoroughfare through the herd but the horse’s twitching ears alerted us to the presence of elephants feeding just over the ledge above our heads. The trailmaster raised his hand and we waited while he went forward to check that the coast was clear. Just as he passed a crumbled part of the wall a young bull elephant came charging down into our little canyon.

The horses spun on their heels, nostrils flaring, anxious for flight. Even as I fought to hold Strider back I was trying to jam my camera back into a saddlebag – already having had an inkling of how easily a pound of bouncing Nikon metalwork could dislodge my teeth. The enthusiasm with which Strider tackled the near-vertical walls of these gullies was a testament to the bumper sticker on the back of Steve’s saddle - Best 4x4xfar! - and I knew that he could outrun an elephant…but I wasn’t too confident about my chances of still being with him when he’d done it.

The young bull was so intent on gaining the momentum that would push his impressive bulk up the other bank that he clearly never even noticed that he had just barged right through the middle of our little ‘pioneer column.’ Giggling behind our hands – like truant schoolchildren trespassing in a farmer’s field – we pointed our horses forward and tiptoed our way onward through the Land of the Giants.

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